You speak what language?

One common question I got asked before coming to Vanuatu was, "What language do they speak there?" Vanuatu has three official languages: French, English, and Bislama, a pidgin language with basis in French, English, and various local languages. Once you get outside the official languages however, the people of Vanuatu speak over 100 languages across the roughly 65 inhabited islands, making it the most linguistically diverse country in the world.

Here's an excerpt from bislama.org about the origin of the language:
"Bislama was developed during the 1870's and 1880's in the 'Blackbirding' era when thousands of Ni-Vanuatu were forced to work on plantations in Australia and Fiji.  Coming from many different islands that each had their own local languages, a form of pidgin English was developed that combined English words with the grammatical structures from the Pacific region.  This pidgin allowed communication between the native populations and also with plantation owners, European traders and settlers.  When the survivors of the Blackbirding returned to their islands in the early 20th century, this pidgin became widespread and is the origin of the widely spoken Bislama in Vanuatu, Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and Pijin of the Solomon Islands."

Since so much of the language is based in English, it was remarkably easy to learn, at least compared to other languages that I've studied. After 4 weeks of language training and living with a host family, I felt about as comfortable with Bislama as I did after 10 weeks of learning Bambara in Mali. By the end of our 10 weeks of training, I would compare it to when I finished Spanish 204 (my fourth term). Essentially, when I got to my site after training, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to totally communicate in Bislama alone. When my parents asked me how well people speak English here, I was honestly stumped. I hadn't even noticed that I so rarely talk to people in English (or French), that I had no idea.

While Bislama is not the most complicated of languages, it does have it's pitfalls. I remember early on in my training village, when my host family kept asking me if I was going to "swim". It was about 9PM, cold, and dark. Confused, I would keep putting it off. No, I didn't want to go for a swim! What a silly question! My family would give me a weird look, smile, and shake their head. The next night, they asked again. This time, however, I watched as they asked my little brother, who obediently got up and walked to the rain tank to fill a bucket and take a shower. I remember the exact moment that I realized that "swim" didn't just mean "swim". "Swim" also means shower! Feeling quite silly, I emphatically agreed the next time the posed the question.

It's also tricky sometimes how similar Bislama is to English. Many verbs in Bislama are the english word with '-im', '-em', or '-um' added to the end. To cook is kukum (coo-coom); to wash is wasem (wah-sem); to take is tekem (tay-kem); and so on and so forth. (My aunt and uncle once asked me how to say "good morning", to which I replied "gud moning") On the other hand, there are many that are based on local language or French. To eat is kakai (ca-cay); to fight is raorao (rau-rau); to drive is ronron (run-run)...and then there's long and blong, the two most complicated words (in my opinion) in Bislama. I don't want to get too far into the difficulties of that, but suffice it to say that of our 10 weeks of training, it took us probably about 4 to learn when to use each of those words.

I guess I'll leave it at that for now, as I'm sure many of you don't like to nerd out on language as much as I do. It's been about 8 months in country now, and I feel just about as comfortable with Bislama as I ever did with French or Spanish, which seems like a big accomplishment to me. My biggest regret is that Bislama doesn't transcend Vanuatu; when I go home, who knows when I'll be able to use it again?